The paperless office remains the optimistic hope of many. Nonetheless, despite the ongoing electronic revolution, more paper is being used in offices around the country and throughout the world than ever before. In fact, the increased demand for high capacity media devices, such as high speed copiers and printers capable of holding multiple reams of media, for example only and not by limitation, for the creation and reproduction of documents, pictures, and the like has created a new office drudgery that is time-consuming, and therefore costly, and subject to failure. This thankless task is the job of properly loading these high capacity media devices with multiple reams of media, such as standard letter size and A4 paper used for most office printing and copying.
Typically, high capacity media devices are capable of holding four or more reams of paper. As a result, today when a high capacity input (HCI) device runs out of paper, the user must open a box containing reams of paper. Then, the user must open and load four or more reams, as appropriate, before most high-end HCIs are fully loaded. In addition to the box and/or packaging the reams come in as a group, each ream is individually wrapped. Another negative aspect of the current process is the large amounts of waste wrappers and packaging materials that are generated.
Loading and waste generation are not the only problems encountered in the prior art use of HCI devices. Another problem is that if the reams of paper are not properly aligned, the misalignment often causes paper jams and malfunctions. A related issue is “splits”. Splits occur at the interface of one ream of paper with another. Even the most careful alignment does not always ensure that a jam or malfunction will not occur at a split. Still further, prior art HCI devices using large amounts of media are adversely affected by moisture. Moisture affects the ability of the HCI devices to pick up media for processing.